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After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

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Wingnuts Lose Suit Over MN History Standards

Texas and Kansas are apparently not the only states where the right wing wants to change the history standards. In Minnesota, they actually filed a lawsuit over the history curriculum for public schools and a state judge just ruled against them in that suit.

Minnesota schools are free to implement new standards for teaching social studies after a judge ruled against critiques that the curriculum reflected a liberal and “anti-American” bias

Administrative Law Judge Barbara Neilson’s decision in the ideological battle over competing views of how to teach the American story called the new standards “needed and reasonable.” She ruled that they can be adopted as planned for the 2013-2014 school year.

Neilson was asked to mediate a dispute between the Department of Education and a group of mostly conservative critics, led by Education Liberty Watch and a number of Republican legislators.

In her decision, Neilson addressed the criticisms and the responses from the department on each point, such as whether the standards ignored the concept of “American exceptionalism,” removed the role of God-given rights from the discussion and unfairly called the U.S. a “democracy” rather than a “republic.”

In each case, Neilson found the responses by the Department of Education to be reasonable and based on current research, although she did not wade into the details of each controversy…

But critics complained the standards do not describe citizens’ rights as “God-given.” The department responded that this is a religious belief and not widely accepted in the social studies community. The argument over “American exceptionalism” followed many of the same contours, with conservatives contending the standards downplay America’s strengths, while the department argued that students must learn of America’s struggles as well as its strengths. The critics found persistent “liberal bias” throughout, but the department said it relied on research, not interpretations of religious texts.

The judge noted the department’s response that the standards “provide a positive portrayal of America” while also asking students to study “the battles that have been won to provide greater political, economic and social equality.”

Ugh, Karen Efrem and Ed Watch (or whatever they call themselves now…Michelle Bachmann’s old group.) I dealt with them during the 2003 science standards writing and again during the 2009 effort. I teach elementary social studies methods as well as elementary science methods and can say that the new SS standards are light years better than the 2004 standards.

This is the first I heard of this and must say I am surprised. On the science standards committee we actually used the word ‘evolution’ in the standards and as a subject heading and this did not lead to a judicial ruling.

This has been popping up all over the country since the Tea-bagger crowd came out of the woodwork.

They want Real True American History™ taught in school. Overall arguments have been in favor of teaching 1920s style Gone With the Wind as history, white man’s burden, etc. Tennessee was a perfect example of this when they were going to bar teaching anything negative about the founding generation or the experiences of minority groups in the early country (namely the truth about slavery and Indian policy).

There have also been pushes to get rid of “Democratic, Democracy, etc.,” a’la the “Democrat” party, etc., and instead refer to the US as a Republic, Republican form of government, etc. Attempts to teach the “Biblical roots of the Declaration and the Constitution,” and a bunch of other Barton-esque revisionist crap. I had parents a few years ago who were “keeping an eye” on economics because we were teaching that “Keynes communism” stuff.

So, as a recap:

Patriotic indoctrination for history
The Bible’s role in the Constitution for government
Supply Side economics for Economics

Honestly, I’d prefer the book referred to the U.S. as a “democratic republic”, and then explain how neither party has any actual linkage to those terms. But that may just be me.

Also, these twits keep misusing “American exceptionalism”. The term was coined to mean that because of America’s unique situation at the time of its founding, other nations shouldn’t expect the American model of society to work for them. In short, Alexis de Tocqueville was saying that America was a bad role model, because it didn’t operate under the same circumstances that other nations did.